MFNW Thursday: Portlanders & Scotsmen

You know what’s hard to come by during Musicfest NW? Time. Time to do anything like, say, blog. There’s plenty of time to stand around impatiently as the band before your favorite band seems to play forever and you’re stuck sweating and trying to sip a beer slowly, but when Frightened Rabbit goes on at 12:30 in the morning (in theory) and you, as a result, sleep in so late you almost miss lunch, well, shit, my friends, you run out of time. Continue reading 

Oregon Freedom of Information Law Isn’t

Is the state freedom of information law free? No, the Oregon Attorney General’s office charges $25 a pop for the public’s document and has refused to put a free download online. UO Economics Professor Bill Harbaugh—a longtime critic of UO athletic and administrative spending and affirmative action—didn’t like that. So he scanned the whole AG manual on the law and put it on his blog. Continue reading 

Five Eugeneans Are Oregon Book Awards Finalists

Literary Arts has announced the finalists for the 2009 Oregon Book Awards, and five of them are particularly local: Miriam Gershow, Debra Gwartney, Bonnie Henderson, Barbara Pope and Leslie What are all among the finalists for this year’s awards. (Perennial finalist Deborah Hopkinson of Corvallis has already won; her book is the only contender in the children’s category.) Continue reading 

Police to Move Away From Crime

The city of Eugene is planning to spend $16 million to move its police to a new headquarters across the river from most crime. Here’s a map from a website the police department uses to map their crime data. The map shows violent crimes since March. The blue arrow depicts where the police headquarters is now (red dot) and where City Manager Jon Ruiz is planning to move it. Continue reading